What is the author's style in them by Joyce Carol Oates?

them is divided into three unequal sections. The first, "Children of Silence," begins with Loretta as a teenager, living a lonely life with her drunken, deranged father. The father is a vague presence who does not actually appear in the novel, and young Loretta spends hours standing in front of a mirror, repeating her own name, wondering who she is. This section ends with Loretta's daughter, Maureen, who has been saving money to move away and establish her own identity, having her money and dignity stolen away at the hands of her drunken stepfather, who beats her mercilessly.